Cargo Culting, Appliances, and Homebrewing

Hack-A-Day had an interesting short piece on cargo culting and computer coding:

https://hackaday.com/2022/12/03/cargo-culting-and-buried-treasure/  

Obviously there is a lot here that it applicable to ham radio.  Feynman admonished us to try to deeply understand what we are doing.   Do we risk cargo culting when we make use of gear that we really don't know anything about?  Or when we use a chip that we don't really understand?  (I'm looking at you, Si5351.)

I guess we can't really understand some of this stuff as deeply as Feynman would like -- can anyone describe the signal flow in a CPU chip?  I don't think so.  And Feynman would be the first to admit that no one really understands quantum mechanics. Still, as the author notes, we should be cognizant of the gaps in our understanding.  For there dragons lie.  Or opportunities to learn. The comments on the Hack-A-Day post are mostly pretty good. 

Bill N2CQR Talks to Dean KK4DAS about the Simple SSB Group Build

Dean KK4DAS visited the N2CQR SolderSmoke shack.  We talked about a lot things including chess, Mars, and AI.  Dean is an amazing guy -- he used to work at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a couple of times  actually spoke with Richard Feynman. We also shot a video about the Vienna Wireless Society's group build of Pete Juliano's Simple SSB transceiver (video above).  

This group build all started with Dean's build of Pete's rig.  He built his early in the pandemic, while on furlough from work,  thus the name "The Furlough 40." That makes all of this very much a quarantine effort. As we have learned, dark clouds often do have silver linings. 

For more details on the group build, check out Dean's blog:
https://kk4das.blogspot.com/

And here is the Vienna Wireless Society's Group Build page: 

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1cQMGPfG1aAZyksIa9fIkS90TjX2_TMuv

Thanks Dean!  And three cheers for all the Vienna Wireless builders!

Coils, Magnets, and Special Relativity (video)

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Feynman at G-QRP Convention!

What do Richard Feynman and the G-QRP club have in common?

The answer is an annual pilgrimage to Ripponden in Yorkshire, England. The G-QRP club have their convention in a local school and Feynman went there every summer to visit his wife's family. Here's an interview with Feynman filmed at the Old Bridge Inn which is about a mile from where the G-QRP club gather:

http://www.openculture.com/2012/11/richard_feynman_talks_physics_in_take_the_world_from_another_point_of_view.html

Is this enough to make Ripponden the Knack Centre of England?

Regards,  Alan G0RWB

Our book: "SolderSmoke -- Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics" http://soldersmoke.com/book.htm Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmoke Our Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20

Feynman's Red Book (on the Sino-Indian Frontier)

Today I bought a copy of "Feynman's Tips on Physics."   I wasn't sure about buying it, but this story in Ralph Leighton's foreword convinced me:  

"At a lonely border post high on the Himalayan frontier, Ramaswamy Balasubramanian peered through his binoculars at the People's Liberation Army soldiers stationed in Tibet ― who were peering through their scopes back at him. Tensions between India and China had been high for several years since 1962, when the two countries traded shots across their disputed border. The PLA soldiers, knowing they were being watched, taunted Balasubramanian and his fellow Indian soldiers by shaking, defiantly, high in the air their pocket-sized, bright-red copies of Quotations from Chairman Mao ― better known in the West as "Mao's Little Red Book."

Balasubramanian, then a conscript studying physics in his spare time, soon grew tired of these taunts. So one day, he came to his observation post prepared with a suitable rejoinder. As soon as the PLA soldiers started waving Mao's Little Red Book in the air again, he and two fellow Indian soldiers picked up and held aloft the three, big, bright-red volumes of The Feynman Lectures on Physics.

One day I received a letter from Mr. Balasubramanian.  His was among the hundreds I have received through the years describing the lasting impact Richard Feynman has had on people's lives.  After describing the "red-books" incident on the Sino-Indian Frontier, he wrote, 'Now, twenty years later, whose red books are still being read?' "   

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Feynman on Electricity

Our book: "SolderSmoke -- Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics" http://soldersmoke.com/book.htm Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http://www.cafepress.com/SolderSmoke Our Book Store: http://astore.amazon.com/contracross-20